From the villages to Europe

Within twenty years, almost all the men of San Tin and Chau Tau had left. Why they went, how they travelled and how one helped the next – the story of your parents or grandparents, told with what more than a hundred of them said in 2010 to a researcher from the family.

1927 – TODAY
·
新田 · 洲頭 → ENGLAND · THE NETHERLANDS · EUROPE

A family at Kai Tak airport, 1957, before leaving for Europe

KAI TAK, 1957 · SEEING A FAMILY OFF, BEFORE THE JOURNEY TO EUROPE

AT A GLANCE

Sixty years in three phases

The sailors went first, in the 1920s. From 1957 the farmers and their sons left. They went by ship to London and later by plane to Amsterdam. Whoever arrived in the sixties had their own restaurant by the eighties, and children at a Dutch school. And from the nineties on, some of the first generation have been going back again: the leaf falls back to the root – 落葉歸根.

1950 – 1975The adventurersLeaving the village, working in the kitchen, sending money home.

1976 – 1996Settling inA business of your own, a family here, the children at school. An association in London.

1997 – NOWBack – and at home hereThe older generation returns to the village; their children have put down roots here. An association in Amsterdam.

01 · WHY THEY LEFT

The rice no longer paid

For centuries San Tin lived off red rice grown on brackish fields. In the 1950s the villages around San Tin switched to vegetables – five harvests a year instead of one. San Tin couldn’t: the fields were salty, there was no fresh water, and the money and the know-how to make the switch weren’t there.

When cheap rice from Thailand took over the market in the early sixties as well, most farmers gave up. Land was leased to farmers from Shantou for no more than the price of a few packets of cigarettes a year. There was no other work: Hong Kong was full of refugees from China looking for the same jobs, and the only university was out of reach.

WHAT OPENED THE DOOR

1948A British passport for everyone in the colony. Until 1962 you could go to England without further ado; after that you needed a work permit, which family there arranged for you.

1950sChinese restaurants in England and the Netherlands were looking for cooks and washers-up. A kitchen wage was three to four times a Hong Kong wage.

1964The Netherlands relaxes its work permits for foreigners. Anyone in London could go on to Amsterdam on their British passport – and there was child benefit here.

1967Riots in Hong Kong, a bomb at the village committee. A second wave leaves, afraid of what’s coming.

Tai Hang 泰亨, the third Man village, largely stayed put: there you could grow vegetables, and the market at Tai Po was just round the corner.

85–90%of the men of San Tin were living in Europe by the mid-seventies. Left behind in the village were mainly the elderly, and women with small children.

PASSPORTS FOR RELATIVES FROM SAN TIN, PER YEAR

1962: 71 · 1969: 851967 incomplete · 1970 to July

SOURCE · HONG KONG IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT, VIA WATSON (1975)

02 · THE JOURNEY

Five weeks in the hold

In the late fifties you went by ship; it was cheaper than flying. Later came the plane – and a travel agency run by two brothers from the family.

DEPARTURESan Tin · Chau TauLand or a buffalo sold to pay for the ticket: around HK$ 1,400 a head. A group from the village travels together.

OVER A MONTH AT SEAMarseilleSleeping on camp beds in the ship’s luggage hold. From Marseille, onward by train.

FIRST JOBLondonA bed at a fellow villager’s, a job in his kitchen. Anyone who couldn’t cook started at the sink. £ 8.50 a week.

ON TO THE CONTINENTThe Netherlands · Belgium · GermanyThis is where the restaurants grew fastest. A cook earned 400 guilders a month, later more. Some came via London, others directly.

THE SIXTIESThose who’d made it came back to visit and had a new house built. That was catching: many boys left without finishing school. Now by plane.

THE SEVENTIESTeachers, policemen, drivers and office clerks leave too. Two brothers from the family start a travel agency with charter flights between Hong Kong and Europe – ticket on credit.

NOT EVERYONENot every departure went to plan. Some came without papers, some were sent back, and not every business did well. That’s part of the story too.

03 · THE NETWORK

Cousins helping cousins

Nobody left on a whim. Whoever went already had an address, a job and a loan – with family. That’s why the whole family went, and not just one or two.

A bedA place to sleep above a cousin’s restaurant. In Amsterdam in 1963, two men slept in one single bed, each with his feet beside the other’s head.

A jobWhoever had a restaurant arranged the work permit and the work for the next one. That’s how you learnt the trade – and started up yourself a few years later, often with four fellow villagers as partners.

A loanThe passage was given as an advance on your wages, by a relative already in Europe. Early on, the money sometimes came from the village’s ancestral funds. For a business of your own, the brewery and the suppliers gave credit.

A letter homeAn envelope with money in it, every month or two. So much that in the sixties the government opened a post office in San Tin. In the village the children would say: ‘Eat up, your father’s sent money again.’

Whoever came back handed out matchboxes to every household in the village – so everyone knew you were there. The cold weather, the long days and the language you didn’t speak got less of a mention. That, too, kept the flow going.

04 · THE FIRST ONES

Before the farmers went, the sailors went

In the 1920s one in three families in San Tin had a son at sea. Those who saw a chance went ashore in London, Liverpool or Rotterdam. They laid down the first addresses.

Wen Chang’s family card in the population register of The Hague, 1936

POPULATION REGISTER, THE HAGUE · 1936

CHAU TAU 洲頭 · 1905

Man Kam Sheung

In the papers he’s Wen Chang – he got his documents in Shenzhen, in Mandarin. Came to Rotterdam in 1927 via Jakarta and worked there as a cook. In 1936 he opened a shop and a restaurant on Thomsonplein in The Hague with Man Tchao Tcho from San Tin: the first family business in the Netherlands. Married a woman from The Hague in 1942, brought his brother and fellow villagers over after the war, and by the late fifties had a noodle factory in Amsterdam.

Man Ying Sang with staff in a Chinese restaurant in Soho, London, 1940s

CHOY’S, DEAN STREET, SOHO · 1940s

SAN TIN 新田 · 1908

Man Ying Sang

Went to sea at sixteen and came ashore in London in the 1920s. When the first farmers from San Tin arrived thirty years later, he let out beds in Chitty Street – half a pound a week – and gave them work in his three restaurants and his coffee bar. With the work came the work permit. For many, that’s where Europe began: with him.

KAI TAK · 1957 · SUITCASE AT THE FRONT

TAI HANG 泰亨 · 1957

A clerk from Tai Hang

From the village that didn’t leave, one man did: a shipping clerk of 32, by plane to Belgium because his father-in-law was there. Ticket: HK$ 3,800. He wanted to earn more so his children could study. In 1961 he came to Rotterdam and became a restaurateur. Two of his sons got their doctorates in America.

05 · TWO HOUSES

An address in London, an address in Amsterdam

In the village you had the ancestral hall; in Europe you had to make a place to see each other yourselves. The British family did it first: on 18 July 1976 they met in London to set up an association, the Man Clansmen Association. The aim was to raise £ 120,000 for a building of their own. Money was collected in the Netherlands and Germany too, and a few years later the building in Romilly Street was theirs.

In the Netherlands it only came about after two earlier attempts, in the ’80s and ’90s. On 8 August 2000 Stichting Familie Man in Europa was founded. In June 2001 the family bought the clubhouse on Binnen Bantammerstraat – with a loan from London and gifts from all over Europe, Hong Kong and China.

How it all began

1977Man Clansmen Association (Europe)4 ROMILLY STREET · LONDON · 文氏宗親總會

The front of the Man Clansmen Association in London: a red sign reading 僑歐文氏宗親會 and a red awning above the door

2001Stichting Familie Man in EuropaBINNEN BANTAMMERSTRAAT · AMSTERDAM · 僑歐文氏宗親會（歐陸）

The clubhouse at Binnen Bantammerstraat 21, with the nameplate of Stichting Familie Man in Europa behind the window

06 · IN THEIR OWN WORDS

What they say about it themselves

In 2010 a relative spoke to more than a hundred family members for his research, in San Tin, Chau Tau and the Netherlands. Three of them, briefly.

‘I was a farmer, and farming was finished. At first I was only passing through, because I thought we’d be sent away anyway. It was only with a restaurant of my own that I started to stay. Then I had my wife and children come over.’

BORN 1921 · TO LONDON IN 1958, THEN THE NETHERLANDS

‘Leaving the village is like a leaf falling from the branch. It was dull here, I felt alone. Slowly I got used to it. Then I married, and it got easier.’

TO THE NETHERLANDS IN 1961 · AT SIXTEEN

‘I’ve done well, I think. But I’d rather have stayed in San Tin.’

TO AMSTERDAM IN 1963 · OWN RESTAURANT IN 1966

Almost everyone says the same thing afterwards: it was hard, and it was good. Not for the restaurant, but for what it gave the children. In 1987 the paper reported that the son of a spring-roll manufacturer from Amsterdam had qualified as a pharmacist, cum laude – an honour for the whole Man family, the piece began. That’s the sentence this story comes down to.

Do you have a story like that in the family – a father who slept on a ship, an uncle with a restaurant in Twello, a box of old photos? We’ll record it.

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SOURCES · Wan Loi Man, The Man Lineage in the Netherlands and Europe (1950–2010): A migration narrative, Leiden University 2011 · J. L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, 1975 · The figures and dates are from those studies; the family stories from the interviews of 2010. All literature →

CULTUREThe village of San Tin 新田Where they came from HISTORYMan Tin Cheung 文天祥Where the line begins